


Someone New

by mjstark



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Based on a song, Fluff, Happy, Hozier, Love, Multi, Sylvia Plath - Freeform, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric, this is a plotless happy fic for a beautiful character who learns to love, tony falls in love, tony x everyone, with everyone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 18:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14527008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjstark/pseuds/mjstark
Summary: "And so I fall in love just a little ol' little bitEvery daywith someone new"...This is the story of Tony Stark’s day. Just a day in his life, of all the things that he sees and the people he’ll meet.And you’ll see, as clear as crystal, how easy it is to fall in love, just a little ol' little bit, every day with someone new.(I wrote this based on the hozier song 'someone new'. Just Tony, giving and receiving the love he deserves).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, here's something I felt I needed to get out of my system! With each person Tony meets, I've given them a sylvia plath quote that i think suits them.

Morning comes and it brings with it a hundred colours. Morning comes and Tony Stark breathes, eyes closed, fingers loose, and mind quiet. He smiles a little, pulls his hands together, listens to the air around him. Today is bright and warm, a million things at once and beauty in every corner. 

Listen- is your heart beating? Are your lungs breathing? Are you thinking, to yourself, that this is what it is to be alive? 

Look- are your eyes open? Does your world glow? Do your thoughts hum? Do you know, in your heart and your soul, what it is to be awake in a thriving world?

Tony does. Tony opens his eyes and the room is alight with the sun. If you want to taste love in each day, taste knowledge and beauty in each of your moments, then first you must enter the world with a mind and heart that is open to it. 

This is the story of Tony Stark’s day. Just a day in his life, of all the things that he sees and the people he’ll meet. And you’ll see as clear as crystal how easy it is to fall in love, just a little bit, every day with someone new.    
  


 

It starts in a Walmart, like all great things do, and a woman scanning orange juice and not once looking up.

So maybe Tony smiles, reads her name as a girl named Pepper and tells her, hey, you look like you could use a smile. She looks and her eyes are blue. She looks right at him and she looks so clever. Cleverness that is not hidden or disguised, not smothered or embarrassed. It was unabashed. Bold as brass and sharp as a knife. Intelligence that was hard and cold and beautiful. She smiles, tugs at one ginger strand of her hair. Tony falls in love with her, just a little bit.

He asks about her, how she is, who she is. Why she works at Walmart. It’s a temporary job, he’s told. She’s going to do great things, he knows. Tony knows that she’s truly mastered  the art of scraping through. 

Strength and potential. Pepper was a foundation, a rock, ready for anything.

“What are you scared of?” Tony asks, watching her eyes check for customers that weren’t there, impatient at their extended conversation. She looks back at him, and she’s itching. Itching to tell the world who she is and what she can do. She’s controlled, beautiful, brave and bold. Strange perfections.

“What terrifies me most,” She says, and Tony wants to hear her speak forever.  “ is the idea of being useless. Well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”

Tony doesn’t reply. Tony doesn’t want to spoil the surprise for her. She’s going to be incredible. She’s going to change the world. He can’t wait.

He picks up the juice and goes to leave but she grabs him, cold, firm fingers wrapping around his wrist.

“Thank you,” She says, and kisses him once on the lips. It lasts no more than three seconds. Not a kiss of passion or lust, but of thanks, and of kindness. It’s gentle and sweet tasting, consistent as waves on the shore.

 

Or maybe Tony says nothing. Maybe she scans the juice and he pays and he walks away, leaving the girl to her check out desk. With steel skin and a gentle touch, Pepper is a flower made of iron. Tony is in love with her.

Thing is, Tony has so much love to give. So much love and no one to give it to. A boy trips on his way into the store as Tony leaves it, in doing so touching his hand briefly to Tony’s t-shirt. It’s beautiful. The boy is beautiful and perfect and Tony loves him a little bit for the way his hair falls in front of his eyes. Loves him for the self-deprecating smile, the tinge of pink embarrassment on his cheeks. Loves him for the ‘sorry’ that escapes his lips. Tony loves him, but then the moment has passed and the boy is gone again.

And Tony walks. Today, he is in love. Tomorrow, maybe he will hate. Maybe his soul will burn with the anger of a thousand warriors, or drown in the sadness of the abandoned. Maybe his heart will hammer with the determination of the hungry, or stutter with the insecurity of the lost. It doesn’t matter. Today, he is in love.

 

He is in love when he sits down next to a man. 

A homeless man, older than Tony by no more than a year and yet older than Tony by a thousand lifetimes.

He looks up as Tony sits, grey eyes cloudy with untold thoughts.

“I’m Tony,” Tony says, not smiling just yet. The man has brown hair to his chin, stubble and pale skin. The eyes are ancient. This man is a hundred years old, lived through people that Tony will never meet and times Tony will never see. He is angry and sad, burned and tortured, empty and full, tough and flexible, beautiful and wise.

 

Yet, that’s not what matters. Beneath it all, beneath the rusting metal of a man who hasn’t said a word yet, there’s humour. There’s the tug of the corner of his mouth. A strange perfection.

“Bucky.” 

 

“I bought us some food,” Tony explains, bringing out a breakfast in excess. 

“Why?” He doesn’t touch it, barely moves as Tony spreads it out. 

“Because I’m hungry,” It’s too much. There’s everything needed and more.

“Who are you?” Bucky asks, and then he moves for the first time. They’re in the entrance to an abandoned shop, tucked away and yet exposed. People walk past. Now, with a view of all those that walk, Tony and Bucky sit side by side, leaning against the door to an empty store.

“I told you already," 

“No.” Bucky doesn’t look at him, just at the food and the passers-by. “Who are you?” 

Tony doesn’t answer. I don’t want you to figure me out. They sit in silence for several seconds, but Bucky has had too much silence. Tony knows this, even if it’s made up. Even if it’s fake. So he talks, at first mindlessly, but progresses to more. He searches himself, his life and his mind, for something. Bucky is a cauldron of memories and pain, unclear in its properties and yet potent enough to give off a warning heat. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that he is a deep ocean of intensity and beauty. He’s _funny_.

 

They talk and soon they’re laughing, leaning into each other and laughing so hard that no sound even comes out. Tony wheezes, eyes squeezed shut in his laughter and Bucky’s snorting, hand clutching at Tony’s thigh because a brick will sink in an ocean, but a feather will float. This is a feather. This is a leaf. This is floating and Tony sucks in a loud lungful of air, stomach hurting with his laughter. Tears are brimming in Bucky’s eyes, gasping breaths in an attempt to regain himself. The ocean is a lot of things, and one of them is quite simply  _ alive _ . Tony is alive with the life that’s held in the ocean, the life that’s held in Bucky. 

Tony’s in love with him. He looks stunning. Fuck the hidden depths. Fuck the weight of the world. Fuck it. Fuck it. Tony’s fallen in love, just little bit, with this stranger. The stranger who’s laughing so hard he’s not thinking, he is simply existing. The seeds of a dandelion floating on the wind. This is what it feels like to float instead of sink. Youth is a beautiful thing. Bucky is ancient and antique, heavy and sturdy. Yet now, as Tony gets up to leave, he is fresh and beautiful as ever.

Bucky is an oak tree. An oak tree will have magic seeping through its branches, the memory of the ages it has endured laced in its very being, time spreading like the roots in the soil and yet, each year, spring will come and the leaves will grow, fresh and new as a sunrise. 

Tony’s a billionaire. The money he leaves is nothing to him and, truthfully, nothing to Bucky. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

 

Bucky looks at Tony as he stands up, a small thank you in his eyes. “Here I am,” He says, and a smile is maybe all he needed, “a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

 

He kisses Tony, deep and meaningful and full, warm. Tony falls in love, just a little bit. 

“Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

 

Tony leaves and Bucky stays, clutching the money in his hands. The sun shines and its reflection is shimmering on the surface of an ocean whose depths and power will shift for an eternity. 

 

 

Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he sees a homeless man and he drops him some money and keeps walking. Maybe he gives Bucky what he doesn’t need instead of what he does.

 

 

 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

People are beautiful, and Tony is full of love.

 

The streets of this city are full, buzzing with life and thrumming with the electricity and movement, and Tony is full of love. So, when a girl drops her purse and he hands it to her, their fingers brush and he falls in love. When he crosses the street and the light catches on the blonde hair of a tall woman, he falls a little in love.

He falls in love with the colours of the world, the smell of the air, the feeling of the wind. He loves the shattered glass on the ground, the dust in the wind, and he loves the sounds and the smells and the tastes of each and every day.

And he loves the music. 

A girl stands in the park, a large black speaker by her side and a guitar in her hands. She’s beautiful, her voice strong and loud and soft in a way that draws him in. 

Now, the world is a blur. There’s so many people here and Tony was dancing because why not? 

He wasn’t alone. Swept up in the arms of a much larger man, he begins to move. Long hair, down to his shoulders and blond, eyes bright with excitement.

The man was music himself, fast-paced and powerful and yet so gentle. The man lived in the music, sweeping Tony up with him and spinning them around and around and around until his vision was a blur but his mind was still thrumming with the sound of the songs.

Tony couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see the man whose arms held him but he didn’t need to. He could  _ hear _ him, hear the beat of his heart like the beat of a song, the laughter in his voice like a melody. It was electric, pace like thunder and a sudden, exhilarating, shock through his own veins like lightning.

Dancing and dancing and dancing because to move was to join life itself. 

Life  _ is  _ movement, and this man was liquid gold.

The cold air rushes down his throat. Tony spins, again and again and again because this was every song, alive and thriving in his body and he danced, eyes closed, because he and the man, it was enough. Connected in every sense, energy rushing in waves between them, exploding like a match to gasoline. 

Find yourself and lose yourself, find each other and lose each other, dance and laugh and  _ listen _ because this man embodied the sound of every song you’ve ever listened to and felt in your bones. This man was every song that’s made you sink to your knees. This man was every song and every dance that’s taken over your body until you've felt nothing but its beat and its soul.

Tony feels his blood rush in the rhythm of the dance, his heart beat in time with his steps, his bones humming with life. Move with him, dance with him, smile with him, let your body breathe and buzz. Tony was brimming and overflowing, eyes forced shut with the music, the space between them sparking and crackling with electricity.

This kerosene love was explosive, fast and dizzying and the man was  _ golden _ , molten hot and searing. He couldn’t control it. Tony couldn’t control the music or the man anymore than he could control a river. Couldn’t control it anymore than he could control a volcano or an earthquake or a whirlwind. The man was a tornado, so much power and yet all Tony could feel was a gentle breeze. 

Tony felt safe in the eye of the storm, felt at home in the music, let loose. The sun was in his eyes, spinning around and around and around, caught in a dream, utterly, utterly,  _ unalone _ in it.

This was how to walk on water, or fly through the air. This was absolutely unreal and impossible.

Suddenly, Tony was back on Earth. The people around them were watching and clapping, or joining in and dancing too. The music slowed, softening, calming, but no less powerful. Tony opened his eyes, matching the glowing stare of the man who held him.

“I have the choice,” The man said, voice deep and beautiful, eyes burning into Tony’s own with nothing short of an immortal brightness, “of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

He kisses Tony then, lifting him completely off his feet in the process. It’s happy, excited, pure joy with none of the naivety. Energy coursed from the man to Tony, static buzzing in the air around them.

 

Tony fell in love with him, just a little bit. Continued to fall even as he walked away, not once looking back. 

 

 

Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he saw the music maker, saw the crowd that she gathered and the blond man walking past, and dropped a few dollars on his way past, not once stopping to dance.

 

 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THOR!! What do you think? 
> 
> I hope this idea hasnt been done before. I'm trying to give each character a different sort of... vibe? Feeling? They each have their own sort of convoluted metaphor. 
> 
> PLEASE comment!! I absolutely love hearing what you guys have to say


	3. Chapter 3

He does remain in the park, settling himself on a bench, letting his body calm down and finding peace in the form of the teenagers across the green, sitting together like nothing else in the world exists. To Tony, they’re just kids. Tony sees nothing except what they have together in that moment. A page of a book he will never read. He watches, witnesses the ease of their smiles and the joy in their voices. One of them is called Peter, and he is making the others laugh.

Peter climbs a tree, nimble and easy, and swings down to hang upside down from a branch. Are they in love? If so, what kind? What form? Each love is different, unique, multidimensional in a way that surely no one can ever understand. Not even consistently beautiful. Sometimes it’s ugly.

What those kids have isn’t ugly. It’s fresh and pure, uncrumpled and blank, filled with potential and excitement. Strange perfections.

Or maybe not.

 

Tony can’t speculate further, too busy loving the love of others to move when there’s someone there, spilling a slushie all down him.

“Oh, my god. I’m so sorry. Are you alright? I’m so sorry. I’m such a dumbass, fuck.” The man immediately starts scraping at his chest, trying to swipe away some of the ice.

“It’s uh, fine.” Tony huffs out a laugh, not caring quite enough to even bother trying to take his eyes off the man.

“It is? I mean, uh, sorry I guess. Really. I don’t know what to- Um.”

“It’s fine. It happens.”

“You’re really cool about this.”

“I’m a very cool person."

“God, I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be.”

“Y’know when something like this happens and you just kinda want the world to open up and swallow you whole?”

“I do, yeah.”

“I’m uh. Really sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m Tony.”

“Peter Quill. Super sorry”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not. God, I need to just, run away and live in a cave or something.”

“A cave?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“That’s boring. I’d probably go for the forest.”

  
“Forest is cool. I think alien abduction is probably the coolest escape option though.”

“Ah, but probably not the most consistent. Robots are cooler than aliens anyway.”

“Mm, what about ninjas?”

“Now, this is beginning to sound like a plan.”

“I just met you and you already wanna run away together?”

“What’s to lose?” Tony says.  
  


“Exactly.”

“I’m down.”

“There must be so much out there.” Quill’s eyes go distant, dreamy, and Tony falls in love, just a little bit.

“Yeah.”

“We don’t ever really… Do you ever realise that we’re just sort of… Nothing?”

“Yeah.” Tony has so many thoughts, but he just wants to listen.

“I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life,” Quill meets his eyes, “and I am so limited.”

Tony smiles, staring a little and then he nods. Pats the man once on the shoulder, smiles. Peter Quill kisses him like its an experiment. Quill kisses him like he just wants to know, and that’s all.

Quill is unexplored. A massive expanse of space and time which can never be mapped. Tony can’t hope to see it any more than he can count the stars in the sky. So, he takes it at face value. Beautiful and empty and impossible.

Or maybe, a man spills his slushie on Tony and apologises, to which Tony says it’s fine and walks away, heading home to find a new t-shirt. Maybe he and the man never talk more than that. It’s simple, really.

It’s simple and clear as day. Tony is in love.

 

Tony is in love with the girl he walks past, whose fingers tap her coffee cup. She’s waiting. She’s waiting. He falls in love with the way he smooths out his coat when he gets off the bus. He falls in love with the way she tucks her hair behind her ears, both sides at the same time. He falls in love with the long eyelashes framing brown eyes on the boy leaning against the wall. He falls in love with the humming of a girl whose face he never even saw. He falls in love with the damp hair of a man who must be fresh out the shower. The battered shoes that are loved just the same as when they were new. Her manicured fingernails, his three day stubble, her nervous twitch of fiddling with a watch strap. Her eyebags. His chewed lip. Their smiles, their frowns, their distracted gaze.

Tony was in love.

 

Yet, somehow, lonely.

He walks past his apartment door, following on down the corridor until he reaches the fire escape that leads to the roof. He climbs. Fingers wrapping around cold metal bars, no focus or goal, just his body taking him to where he needed to be. There was a gravity, pulling him in.

At first, he assumed it was the view. The risk. The usual overwhelming knowledge of his own insignificance that comes from seeing the city’s stretching expanse.

It’s not. There’s no insignificance this time.

There is a man, though.

Tony’s body moves without forethought. An invisible wire from his navel to the edge tugs him forward until he’s side by side with the man facing outwards. Tony doesn’t turn to see his face. It takes all his might not to collapse sideways, the unseeable forces drawing him to the man like a magnet.

When the man speaks, there’s an African lilt to his voice. Tony has never seen him before. He does not live in this building. Tony knows because he surely would have felt this way before. There was no possible way for this elusive man to have passed by Tony without his notice, without the weight in his chest shifting the way it does now.

They stare at the view before them.

Never before has it felt so fake. Like staring at a screen, like walking in a simulation. An oil painting.

Tony breathes and its heavy. The air is thick, warm.

The man next to him does not feel fake. He feels real, focal. The center of everything in Tony’s life, at least for now. Tony is orbiting him. Facing off. You cannot move through a mountain. Now, he cannot go around, cannot turn back, cannot find a way out of this. This man was a mountain. 

  
Tony stares at the view. There were people out there, lives and conversations and sensations. Tony couldn’t feel them anymore, only the man. It was like seeing the surface of the world, soft and smooth and rough and bumpy, without any of the substance within. The cover of a book. A pen with the lid on.

This, here, was an artist with hands bound. A speaker with mouth gagged. A dreamer, awake and hopeless.

Yet, there was the man. Real and alive, thriving in his stillness. The man hardly moves, instilling such peace around him that Tony, a constant whirlwind of sights and sounds, went totally static. The dust settles.

The man had a core of gold, active and impassive in its tranquility. Strange polarities contained and reacted, sending wave after wave of serenity, warming Tony’s skin. It was gentle, but Tony feared the power in the man’s presence would destroy him. Still, he did not look over at the man who took in the world, watching from afar. Tony was meant to be here. He was not interrupting. This was exactly where he was meant to be. The weight in his chest grew.

“I want to taste and glory in each day;” He says and his voice is deep, warm. Heavy. “I want to never be afraid to experience pain, to never shut myself up in a numb core of non-feeling, or to stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out.”

Tony doesn’t move, feet weighted to the floor beneath him, eyes trained on the world.

“We don’t always get what we want,” Tony says after a while, finding it almost impossible to keep his eyes open. He lets his eyelids fall shut, giving in. Lets out a sigh.

When he opens them again, the man is in front of him, his back to the world, eyes on Tony. There’s a smile on his lips, firm and unyielding strength in the fingers that grip Tony’s arms. He’s telling Tony something. Tony wants nothing more than to listen.

When the man kisses him, it’s the answer Tony maybe didn’t know he needed. The weight in his chest does not lift, but it does settle. Molding to his insides like molten iron. Tony’s in love with him, just a little bit.

Then the man is gone. He’s gone but everything he left behind remains. There’s a crater and Tony stands in the middle of it. It’s hard to breathe, the atmosphere like lead on his chest. Tony’s in love.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> QUILL and TCHALLA! Let me know what y'all think i live for comments ngl,.,,.,,,,, anywho can anyone guess who's next? 
> 
> quill was a bit less intense than the rest. hope thats Cool but some love is easy and fleeting

**Author's Note:**

> Pepper and Bucky! Stay tuned for more. I've given each character a quote, let me know what u think!!! Who will Tony meet next?


End file.
